Talk: Dimensional flyaround

   That was an interesting animation.  I would like to see it in color.  
And also makes me wonder what other types of animations are possible.  

   How about a GIF conversion animation? I would like to see maybe 15 
seconds of motion video converted to ASCII animation.

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+:+     +:+    +:+  :+: +:+  :+: +:+    +:+    +:+  :+: +:+  :+: +:+  +:+  +:+ 
++::++  +:+    :+:+:+:+ :+::+:+  :+++#+ :+:    :+:++:+  :+:  +:+ :++  ++:  :+: 
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    +#+ #++    ++#  +++ ++# #++  ++#    ++#    ++# #++  ++#  +++ ++#  ++#  ++# 
    +#+ #+#    #+#  +#+ #+#  +#+ #+#    #+#    #+#  +#+ #+#  +#+ #+#  #+#  #+# 
##+#### +#+### +#+  #+# +#+  #+# +##+## +#+#+# +#+  #+# +#+#+##+ +###+#++#+#+# 
######   ##### ###  ### ###  ### ######  ##### ###  ###  ######   ########### 

Scarecrow:
>    How about a GIF conversion animation? I would like to see maybe 15 
> seconds of motion video converted to ASCII animation.

someone posted a conversion of a sequence from T2 a while ago.  it
wasn't a very clean conversion, so it was pretty hard to see.

what I'm wondering is if anyone's interested in making some sort of
standard for ascii animation, so it can be displayed in a
device-independent manner and with a controlled frame rate.  relying
on vt100 codes and arbitrary computer delays is kind of awkward..

does anyone think ascii animation is worth developing into a more
"polished" form?
--

fle...@cse.psu.edu (Felix Lee) writes:
: 
: Scarecrow:
: >    How about a GIF conversion animation? I would like to see maybe 15 
: > seconds of motion video converted to ASCII animation.
: 
: someone posted a conversion of a sequence from T2 a while ago.  it
: wasn't a very clean conversion, so it was pretty hard to see.
: 
: what I'm wondering is if anyone's interested in making some sort of
: standard for ascii animation, so it can be displayed in a
: device-independent manner and with a controlled frame rate.  relying
: on vt100 codes and arbitrary computer delays is kind of awkward..
: 
: does anyone think ascii animation is worth developing into a more
: "polished" form?
: --
: 
I have looked at three or four and was not too mprssd.  So I made one; it use 
the ANSI control sequences for a dos based machine (everyone has that) it also
uses a batch file for looping. Just type  'type filename' to run it by itself
or type the batch file name for continuous play.  Search for ANIMATION :  
by Lyle Murphy under one of the ascii.??? groups; I posted to a couple.  I think we should stick to Dos with either straight ANSI and Batch file ANSI. 
 

	      ..		_   ..
  (=.	   )^\	/^(   (=.      ' )%=====%''
  ' ;;    '  .\/.  `  ' ;;      ' ;;__   `)
    ;;	      ;;	;;	  ;;``)
    ====^)    ;;.	====^)	  %=====%..
   ' ``  (   ''''      ' ``  (   (  ''   `)
   Lyle Murphy = KTR...@prodigy.com

In article <3gpg9i$a5...@gagme.wwa.com>, Felix Lee <fle...@cse.psu.edu> wrote:
>
>Scarecrow:
>>    How about a GIF conversion animation? I would like to see maybe 15 
>> seconds of motion video converted to ASCII animation.
>
>someone posted a conversion of a sequence from T2 a while ago.  it
>wasn't a very clean conversion, so it was pretty hard to see.

The thing that started this thread was done using a program that I
wrote. The 2280 frame rendering took 6 seconds of user time and 3 of
system time on a 125 Mhz HP9000/735.

The frames are rendered using gray-scale values; the lighting is a
simple Lambert model, whereby the brightness of the surface is
proportional to the cosine of the angle between its normal vector and
the direction of the light.

The basic modelling element is the triangle and the convex polyhedron.
The transformation pipeline goes something like this: transformation
of objects -> shading -> transformation of scene relative to viewer ->
clipping against front/back planes -> perspective -> viewport clipping
-> depthsort -> rendering/antialiasing (the latter in the pixel
version only).

I wrote the VT100 driver as a joke (and as a preliminary port to UNIX
before I hit the Xlib) but it turned out to be pretty interesting!

The driver works by using a simple C string of characters as a
gray-scale lookup table. For each frame, it emits the "home cursor"
escape sequence, followed by a newline-separated dump of the
scanlines. The user can interactively manipulate the camera, then play
the keystrokes back while redirecting the output to a file.

The gzip program achieves a 30:1 compression ratio, bringing a 4.3 MB
or so file down to 160K, because there is a great deal of obvious
redundancy in the rendering, not to mention that it doesn't nearly use
the full character set!

The camera motion is a little hokey - it should really not be made
interactively, but via a spline interpolation of some key camera
positions for smooth motion.

- Kaz

In article <3gpg9i$a5...@gagme.wwa.com> fle...@cse.psu.edu (Felix Lee) writes:
>what I'm wondering is if anyone's interested in making some sort of
>standard for ascii animation, so it can be displayed in a
>device-independent manner and with a controlled frame rate.  relying
>on vt100 codes and arbitrary computer delays is kind of awkward..

To DOSify that recent (amazing) animation, all I had to do was put the other 
CR/LF character at the end of the lines, and to prepend <esc>[2J (ANSI clear 
screen) to the <esc>[1H1 command (goto 1,1).  It seems that any compitent 
editor would be able to do this (if it'll handle files above the 1 meg mark.)

--

  .,,.
   oo    Little did the good Doctor Honeydew suspect
  `()'    that his faithful assistant Beaker was secretly
  _||/     an accomplished soprano in the Vienna Boy's Choir,
 / a/'\     as well as a dashingly successful British spy.
 \_/\_/  Jeremy H. Sproat  internet:1sp...@uvsc.edu